As an American, I am proud to see collaboration between the public and private sector to help solve one of our countries more pressing issues,
namely getting more Americans back to work.

Social Jobs Partnership Goal

This public-private sector collaboration, known as the Social Jobs Partnership, has the stated goal to “facilitate employment for America’s jobless through the use of social networks.”

What a concept. Almost all other facets of our lives are driven by social media, and for many, on Facebook. So why not use the audience and targeting capabilities of Facebook to match up job seekers with employers looking to hire today?

Connect versus Create

With all the talk in Washington DC and around the nation about jobs and the need to create jobs, the Social Jobs Partnership is a collaboration focused on helping to fill existing jobs, over 1.9 million jobsat the time of this pulishing this post!

General Information

In the interest of getting people back to work, the Social Jobs Partnership plans to pursue a number of initiatives designed to more effectively leverage the utility of social networks in the job market:

The partnership will conduct in-depth survey research about the ways in which job seekers, college career centers, and workforce recruiters are using the social web.

The partnership will develop and launch a central page on Facebook that will host specialized resources, and content designed to help job seekers and employers.

The partnership will explore and develop systems where new job postings can be delivered virally through the Facebook site at no charge (remainder of post is a review of existing Social Jobs App

The partnership will promote existing employment programs and resources offered by government agencies for job hunters.

The partnership plans to distribute educational materials about leveraging the power of the social web to recruiters, government agencies and job seekers.

Social Jobs App Review

Now it’s time to kick the tires on the new Facebook Social Jobs App to uncover the good, the bad and the ugly. Given the stated goal and mission of the Social Jobs App, even the “ugly” isn’t that bad.

The first interaction with the Social Jobs App was to detect my location through a location lookup. When clicking the link, the application returned the message “Your location was not found” though a quick Google search affirms that Google has no trouble ascertaining my location (Ballston Lake, NY). I am sure that this location sensing issue has or will be fixed soon.

My first search will include the following filters:

Jobs within 30 miles of my zip code (12019) – with the price of gas, look for a reasonable commute 🙂

Contain the keyword “Marketing”

The results of the first search:

Jobvite – no jobs found

Monster – no jobs found

US Jobs – Sourced from the US Department of Labors jobs database – 100 jobs returned in the search results. The search results however, seem to ignore the keyword “marketing” returning jobs such as “store manager”, “general manager trainee”, etc.

BranchOut – Returns 50 jobs, all with some relationship to the Marketing keyword, but with locations that are 100s (Dallas, TX) and in some cases 1000s (UK) of miles from Ballston Lake, NY, demonstrating that BranchOut is ignoring the location filter of our search.

Work4Labs – no jobs found

Key takeaways: No marketing jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake according to the Job App search results which I find unlikely but is a limitation of the jobs data sources (i.e. not all open jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake, NY are listed in the existing 5 jobs sources for the Jobs App. The US Jobs search results ignore the keywords filter and BranchOut seems to ignore the location filter.

My second search was similar to the first with the exception of removing the “marketing” keyword filter and only included the following location filter:

Jobs within 30 miles of my zip code (12019)

The results of the second search:

Jobvite – 2 jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake, NY. Based on results of the first and second searches, it appears that Jobvite respects the keyword filter as the previous search that included the marketing keyword returned 0 results.

Monster – 103 jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake, NY. Based on results of the first and second searches, it appears that Monster respects the keyword filter as the previous search that included the marketing keyword returned 0 results.

US Jobs – 100 jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake, NY, including a listing from GE for a Principle Engineer, Drive train Technology

BranchOut – Returns 42 jobs which is interesting given that the more restrictive search (one including marketing keyword) actually returned 50 results though not sure why?:-) Once again, BranchOut ignores the location filter returning multiple results from Great Britian.

Work4Labs – 25 jobs within 30 miles of Ballston Lake, NY. Work4Labs appears to honor the keyword filter as the previous search that included the marketing keyword returned 0 results.

Conclusion

Even though the initial version of the Social Jobs App has its issues as outlined in the test results above, it clearly is going to help connect job seekers with existing job openings, in a medium that many have become very familiar with.

With over 1.9 million jobs accessible through the Social Job App at the time of this post, users will find that it is very easy to locate dozens, or in the case of the demo above, 100s of jobs open within 30 miles of a given zip code.

Filtering on keywords is effective for all the job providers with the exception of US Jobs. Filtering by location works for all job providers with the exception of Jobvite. Whether you are looking for a job or know someone that is, why not turn them on to the Social Jobs App in efforts to get America back to work again?

Rick Noel is an experienced digital marketer enabling businesses and organizations to grow through the Internet, while maximizing marketing ROI (Return On Investment). Rick is the CEO and Co-Founder of eBiz ROI, Inc., a full-service digital marketing agency located in Ballston Lake, NY.